Research / Clinical Summary

Wael Al-Delaimy, MD, PhD Associate Professor, Family & Preventive Medicine Cancer Prevention & Control Program Contact by Email

Dr. Al-Delaimy's cancer research is focused on nutrition and tobacco exposures. He has worked more specifically on exposure biomarkers in plasma, hair and toenails, the latter of which was developed for the first time through Al-Delaimy's research.

The aim of developing these biomarkers is to enable better assessment of exposure-disease associations which are usually of small magnitude.

Dr. Al-Delaimy is a multidisplinary epidemiologist who has been involved with several large cohorts including the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Diet (EPIC), the Nurses' Health Study (NHS), the Nurses Health Study II (NHSII), the Health Professionals Follow Up Study (HPFS), and more recently the Rancho Bernardo Study (RBS), and the Women's Healthy Eating and Living Study (WHEL). He tries to link the population-based field work with the laboratory advancments of using more accurate and cost-effective assays for large populations. He developed the toenail nicotine biomarker to acheive this purpose in relation to lung cancer in the HPFS, one of the larger and more established cohorts in the country. He is also involved in research on hormones and diet in relation to cancer outcomes in WHEL and RBS.

At the population level, he is the principal investigator of the California Tobacco Surveys, which is a State-wide representative survey of Californians on smoking related attitudes and behavior that has been ongoing since 1990.

Future directions in cancer research for Al-Delaimy will be in utilizing existing exposure and disease biomarkers and developing new ones that will be of relevance to cancer epidemiology prevention and control and applicable in developed as well as developing countries. He is also interested through his work with the Califronia Department of Health Services and the California Tobacco Surveys to support health policy changes that would further advance tobacco control within the United States and internationally.

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